Short Term Missions

Yesterday I read a short essay on the value of short term missions. I thought this was a timely thing to read since I am gearing up for a short term mission myself. What was interesting was that based on this person’s research, short term missions are not very effective and can sometimes be detrimental to the very people we are trying to help. A little more than a year ago I also read K.P. Yohannan’s book, Revolution in World Missions, which had similar sentiments regarding western missions.

Here’s the thing – I agree with both of them. I too have long felt that short term mission trips were somewhat of a waste of money and didn’t really have the lasting impact that we so desire. So why am I now going on such a trip?? I have 2 main reasons: preparation for the future and the nature of the work we will be doing in Thailand.

I’ll explain more on the first one later but as far as the second one goes, I love that we are not simply going to Thailand to work on some building project or simply to visit orphanages and play with kids while we’re there.

Don’t get me wrong – neither of these are bad things. But instead, we will be coming along side long term missionaries in Thailand to reach out to kids and people who have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ. We will be going from village to village and putting on programs where up to 900 kids might show up!

I am so thankful and feel so privileged to be able to participate in this cross-cultural outreach! Those of you who are partnering with me either financially or in prayer should feel the same way because you too are a part of this!

First Training Day!

This past Sat, Feb 20, I spent 6 hours in a room full of people that I didn't really know.  These 25 people are going to be my teammates on this journey to Thailand.  We all come from different churches and backgrounds but will need to learn to work together to accomplish a single goal.

One of the things that became very clear during training is that we have a lot of work to do!  We will be developing a program from scratch that we will use to reach the children of Thailand.  This program will include games, a teaching lesson, crafts and possibly a skit or puppet show.  We will be meeting monthly as a team to put this together before we leave in July in addition to working on this individually in between our meetings!

My plan is to update this at least weekly with the progress we are making and any challenges, thoughts or "teachable moments" that arise in the process.  Thank you for joining me!